Hillary Clinton made a major policy speech yesterday. She’s running for president of the United States. Every time she opens her mouth – and she has a pretty mouth that says smart things that some people sometimes dislike – somebody has something to say about how she sounds. Seems it is never “just right.”

This popped up in my newsfeed which pretty concisely packages the issue.

I don’t know. What does Hillary Clinton have to do to get it “just right?” To get anything just right? Personally, I was worried about how her poor voice would hold up, it had suffered such abuse these past weeks on the campaign trail. It held up fine, and for my money her tenor was fine. When Hillary gives policy speeches, she generally is calm and deliberate. I have watched many over the past eight years since I began keeping track of her secretary of state tenure. That is her policy speech style. I don’t even want to go into that. Paige Lavender did the topic justice. But what does Hillary have to do to get things “just right?” More to the point, why does she have to?

Everybody has something to say about what she wears, how she sounds, how she looks. Wear that yellow for the speech. No! Oh! Not that awful yellow! Be forceful! Oh no! Don’t yell. Smile more!

Why can’t Hillary just be Hillary? Why can’t the most qualified person ever to run in my life (Harry Truman began as a haberdasher – youngsters, just go google it – I’m too tired – he was the first to run in my life) have a fair chance to spell out her plans without everybody talking about her tone, facial expression, and whatever other third element hits the windshield of the armchair quarterbacks.

When Hillary and I were in college, Marshall McLuhan (go look him up – I am tired of spoonfeeding voting age people) said the “medium is the message.” He meant medium as print v. video. So video is the message today, even though I still like to get my hands on transcripts and lift the passages I think are important. Video – and audio – are the whole show.

I know I am biased. But WTF??????? What is so offensive about Hillary that Bernie’s foghorn and gesticulating, Ted’s cartoon voice, John’s bedtime story voice, and Trump’s bellowing (“Get ‘im out!”) fail to surpass in offensiveness, condescension, plain old annoyance?

Why is her wardrobe an issue? They all look like a suit rack at the cleaners. Why, when she puts forward the only sane. thought-out, and comprehensive plan to combat terrorism is anything other than her words and her plan an issue?

It really never entered my mind that we would have a woman president. I loved Shirley Chisholm. She sat them all down like she was the detention teacher in the halls of Congress. Pat Schroeder gave it her best, and Gerri Ferraro made me proud coming within a margin of being a heartbeat away. But this was never a goal.

It’s just that right now we have the best candidate I have ever seen. She happens to be a woman with a message, a set of plans, and a way of explaining things. She’s not hard to look at, not hard to listen to, and, when you bother to listen, not hard to understand – she explains well.

Why can’t Hillary get it just right? Or is it that the chairs keep getting moved around while the music blares?

Why don’t the guys have to be pitch perfect? Why don’t they even have to pitch it over home base, actually, as long as they throw?

Thank you Hillary Clinton for running for president when you didn’t have to. Thank you for your plans, your brilliance, and for always being right on target while looking pretty and being your spunky and empathetic self. Your Homegirls love you!

OH! This is one of those moments when I so wish I could have been in that crowd. This is a great read! Everyone knows who Chelsea and Sandra are. New Yorkers know Christine well. She’s the one with the auburn hair who stands just behind Michael Bloomberg’s shoulder in every shot she can get into and is probably going to be the next mayor. Nicolle Wallace? What can I say? Anyone who worked as hard as she did to try to get Sarah Palin to understand campaign tactics and foreign policy (or even history and geography) gets an A+ in my book! Wish I had been there. Fun read. HRC looms large, Rosenblum notes.

It’s been more than 30 years since women began to vote in greater numbers than men in presidential elections, and four since Hillary Clinton almost became the Democratic nominee for president.

But of course Hillary didn’t make it, and it’s going to be at least another four years before a woman is nominated by either of the major parties.

“We’re either not having the right conversation,” moderator Chelsea Clinton told the seven-woman panel and a full audience last night at the 92nd Street Y, “or we’re not being heard loudly enough, whether we’re running in heels, or flats or boots.”

In her WaPo article, Twenty Years On, ‘Year of the Woman’ Fades, Karen Tumulty offers many reasons why women have not attained anything approaching parity in political representation, after female membership in the House and Senate doubled in 1992:

“…They made their presence felt beyond Capitol Hill, with the passage of legislation that made the workplace more family-friendly, that directed more medical research to women’s health issues and that made the criminal justice system more responsive to domestic violence.”

Women now represent 16.8% of Congress. We have now hit a plateau, Tumulty says. Another way of putting it is stagnation. The treatment received by Hillary Clinton, who won more votes than any candidate in Primary history, and Sarah Palin, only the second woman to get on a presidential ticket, served as horrifying cautionary tales rather than encouragement. Why would more qualified women run for higher office when a misogynist gauntlet awaits them? What I witnessed in 2008 made the bile rise in my throat from such a deep place that I had to get off the sidelines and take action. The sum total of that action follows:

Ms. Tumulty notes Democrats have declared that Republicans are waging a “war on women.” But the current “war” is being confined once again to a cynical and controlled narrative designed to benefit the President’s re-election bid rather than addressing the underbelly of woman-hate that still seems to permeate all levels of society.

Dirty Words On Clean Skin is a shocking exposé about the real war on women….who’s buying, who’s selling – and why they get away with it.

That war is waged daily by mainstream media, party backstabbers, opposing politicians, advertisers and lowbrow comedians of high powered television shows – all of whom miss no opportunity to degrade and marginalize; reducing women to body parts, wardrobe choices and vocal tics.

The quality and preparedness of Hillary Clinton was continually obscured by the bread and circuses of distraction and character assassination. To a greater or lesser degree, these are tactics with which all females running for office have become acquainted. We say the sky’s the limit for women in this country, but the reality was quite different when we were presented with a test case.

I am so proud to share my work with all of you and will be doing a pre-launch of Dirty Words on Clean Skin for all my kind blogger buddies and readers. The book will be available on Amazon as of April 3rd…The book’s main launch will be April 24th and it will also be available on Kindle at that time.

Your encouragement has both fed me, and taught me to think critically, to make an argument, to stand my ground.

If there were a reality show called “Who’s the REAL Feminist?” Andrew Sullivan evidently considers himself a candidate for judge. He, predictably, had the unmitigated gall to assume the role of “feminist maven”on an “Overtime” segment of HBO’s Bill Maher Show. How appropriate!

He debated the issue with Wendy Schiller, associate professor at Brown University on the segment. Talk about picking your opponent! Sullivan, once again, has shown himself to be the good old misogynist we have all come to know and despise. There is a video in the article. WordPress would not accept the code, so I could not post it here. You can watch it when you click into The Daily Caller article.

On Friday’s “Overtime” segment of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Newsweek columnist and The Daily Beast’s “The Dish” blogger Andrew Sullivan made a comparison between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

According to Sullivan, Thatcher’s legacy was “amazing” because she never played the sex card.

“Thatcher was amazing to me because … she never allowed another woman in her own cabinet, by the way, ever, in 11 years,” Sullivan said. “She’s also a woman in the 50s, got educated in chemistry and had a family and ran as a single woman, and never once in her entire life played the sex card. Never, never played it.”

“… she never allowed another woman in her own cabinet.” What a testament! These women would probably disagree with Judge Sullivan.

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There are many, many more like them. Hillary Clinton has worked for 40 years for women, children, and families. As Secretary of State, her signature issue has been the empowerment of women and girls. Meryl Streep stated, introducing this amazing woman, a hero to so many of us, at the Women in the World Summit this month, that there are women in the world who are still alive today only because they had their pictures taken with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Comparing her unfavorably with the woman who showed not an ounce of empathy with the mothers of the Long Kesh hunger strikers, defies reason and serves to disqualify Sullivan as any kind of judge of feminism.

How dare you, Andrew Sullivan! You crossed the line, and we are watching you!

For those who are fans of this awesome researcher, analyst, and commentator, I have a treat for you.

Karen Finney

Fans have been clamoring on Twitter for awhile for Karen to have her own show at MSNBC, but of course, first things must come first. As a popular guest commentator, she has demonstrated the talents and gifts that are indispensable to success on current events talk TV. She is animated, quick-thinking, well-informed, and circumspect. Not to be shallow, but she is also very easy on the eyes. She is the whole package, but that is not a direct route to a show. What CAN be is filling in for hosts of current shows.

Karen is a regular panelist on Bashir Live at MSNBC 3 p.m. ET. Tomorrow and Friday, Karen will be filling in for Martin Bashir in his absence. Her fans could not be happier to see have this opportunity to showcase her her appreciable skills as a host and moderator.

So tune in to MSNBC at 3 EDT (or check your local listings) tomorrow and Friday and catch Karen! We wish her the best. She’s our homegirl, and we hope this is a step to a Karen Finney show to be aired regularly.

As I join my colleagues to celebrate International Women’s Day at this year’s WIE Symposium in London, I laud the advancement of women over the past few decades, but know that we have much to do in order to achieve gender equality in our societies in the UK and the US.

Over the past four decades, society has broadly accepted and integrated women in the workplace. But, this has not yet reached the highest political offices, the boardrooms and the CEO offices of the corporate world. Women are still largely absent from leadership positions and are too often perceived to be incompatible with positions of power and leadership. This absence of women in positions of power is a painful reminder that gender equality is still an aspiration, not a reality.

It used to be said that behind every successful man was a woman. They meant, of course, a wife. It was a clumsy way of recognising women’s contribution within marriage and the part this sacrifice played in helping husbands advance in their careers.

But as we celebrate International Women’s Day, I wonder if it’s not time to reverse the saying. Let’s, in fact, celebrate the role men are now playing in helping women’s rise to the top.

This is not to suggest that the fight for equality has been won. Any glance at the continuing gender pay gap or lack of women in the boardroom or parliament shows how hollow that claim would be.

This is a “must read.” Tina Brown has penned a masterpiece here. From Hillary Clinton, to Aung San Suu Kyi, to Marie Colvin, these are the women of history as we witness it being made today, they, and those more obscure to us upon whom Tina shines a spotlight in her annual Women in the World event. Thank you, Tina, for this great post and for bringing our sisters in the battles to our attention every year!

Author

Tina Brown

When Hillary Clinton travels around the world as secretary of state, she is a global celebrity of the first rank. But that’s not how she felt when she went to Burma for the first time in 2011 to meet with the heroic Aung San Suu Kyi. One of the greatest living human-rights campaigners, Suu Kyi had chosen to endure—for the sake of the Burmese people—the daily threat of death and 15 years of house arrest, cut off from her husband and children. “It was, ‘Oh, my God, I cannot believe I am with Aung San Suu Kyi,” Ambassador Melanne Verveer told me of Clinton’s emotion on her two-hour talk with Suu Kyi in the house of her long captivity.

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